The invention relates to an electric motor comprising a stator and a rotor, one of the two parts being a slotted armature, with a number of slots equal to R, the other part comprising a number 2P of magnetic poles.
In electric motors, the advantage of the slots, from the magnetic point of view, is that the paths of the magnetic field through the air are shortened because they can enter the cogs of the armature directly from the pole pieces across a relatively small air gap and, from the mechanical point of view, is that the windings placed in the slots are prevented from moving laterally by the flanks of the cogs delimiting the slots.
However, slotted armatures have a drawback known as the "cogging torque" brought about by the interaction between the magnets and the slots of the armature.
This cogging torque and a solution to moderate it have been described, for example, in the article by Messrs Ackermann, Janssen, Sottek and van Steen published in IEE PROCEEDINGS-B vol. 139, No 4, July 1002, pages 315 to 320 and entitled "New technique for reducing cogging torque in a class of brushless DC motors". In this article, the measures proposed for reducing the cogging torque in permanent-magnet brushless motors, if the number of magnetic poles is fairly close to the number of armature slots, consist in carefully adjusting the size of the poles or the size of the slots.
In order to reduce this disadvantageous effect, it is also known practice, in motors with a long rotor and a radial air gap, to have on the shaft of the motor several magnets juxtaposed axially but slightly offset from one another in the peripheral direction.